Resources for Understanding: Addressing Racism Against Asian Americans

Americans of Asian descent have had to contend with a long history of discrimination and violence in the United States. This resource list was gathered in the wake of the anti-Asian attacks in spring 2021, which were a painful reminder that anti-Asian hatred is still very much a part of contemporary society. According to the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate, nearly 3,300 incidents were reported in 2020 alone.

We provide this list of resources that address anti-Asian American racism as a catalyst for positive social change and conversation, to aid not only those who seek to better understand the social causes of this problem, but to help empower those who organize to confront and disrupt it. The work of Asian American Studies scholars listed here gives voice to an equally long history of struggle in the cause of social justice and human rights. These resources acknowledge the cost of the contemporary microaggressions, bigotry and violence suffered by Asian Americans today, while providing context within the history of white supremacist ideology and neo-colonial ambition.

The UC Davis Library, including our Archives and Special Collections, is invested in developing research level collections in Asian American culture, politics, social life and customs. The Asian American Studies Subject Guide lists important gateways to both the academic literature and some of the primary sources available.

Additional resources and support for researchers studying this topic, or related topics, can be found on the library subject guides for Sociology and History. The library has also put together a list of videos and talks addressing racism called, Many Voices Many Stories.

As research evolves and progresses in this area, the library will be providing access to new resources. Please feel free to recommend titles and sources as we build our collections and guides.

Please note: The UC Davis Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offers resources for racial trauma.

Selected Articles

• Abji, Salina, Anna C. Korteweg, and Lawrence H. Williams. “Culture Talk and the Politics of the New Right: Navigating Gendered Racism in Attempts to Address Violence against Women in Immigrant Communities.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 44, no. 3 (Spring 2019): 797–822. https://doi.org/10.1086/701161.
• Ahn, Christine, Terry K. Park and Kathleen Richards. “Anti-Asian Violence in America Is Rooted in US Empire.” The Nation. (2021). Online 3/19/2001: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/anti-asian-violence-empire/.
• Conolly-Smith, Peter. “Race-Ing Rape: Representations of Sexual Violence in American Combat Films.” War & Society 32, no. 3 (October 2013): 233–51. https://doi.org/10.1179/0729247313Z.00000000025.
• Daniels, Roger. “Outsiders: In ‘the Land of the Free’: Aspects of the Asian-American Experience in the Northwest.” Columbia Anthology, January 2007, 1–8. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ahl&AN=54478943&site=ehost-live.
• Kurashige, Scott. “Detroit and the Legacy of Vincent Chin.” Amerasia Journal 28, no. 3 (December 2002): 51. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ahl&AN=9037993&site=ehost-live.
• Lai, Paul. “The Oriental Obscene: Violence and Racial Fantasies in the Vietnam Era.” Journal of Asian American Studies 16, no. 3 (October 2013): 333–35. https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2013.0035.
• Lee, Erika. “Hemispheric Orientalism and the 1907 Pacific Coast Race Riots.” Amerasia Journal 33, no. 2 (August 2007): 19–47. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ahl&AN=27184786&site=ehost-live. Mallapragada, Madhavi. “Asian Americans as Racial Contagion.” Cultural Studies 35, no. 2–3 (March 2021): 279–90. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2021.1905678.
• Maeda, Daryl Joji. “The Asian American Movement.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. 9 Jun. 2016; Accessed 20 Mar. 2021. https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-21.
• Man, Simeon, A. Naomi Paik, and Melina Pappademos. “Violent Entanglements: Militarism and Capitalism.” Radical History Review 2019, no. 133 (January 2019): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-7160029.
• Monzó, Lilia D. “Colonialism, Migration, Pandemic: The Immutable Evidence That Capitalism Is Racist and Misogynist.” Monthly Review, August 2020. https://search.proquest.com/socabs/docview/2421041266/2E47DE70D17246DCPQ/66.
• Ren, Jingqiu, and Joe Feagin. “Face Mask Symbolism in Anti-Asian Hate Crimes.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 44, no. 5 (2021): 746–758. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1826553.
• Tessler, Hannah, Meera Choi, and Grace Kao. “The Anxiety of Being Asian American: Hate Crimes and Negative Biases During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” American Journal of Criminal Justice : AJCJ 45, no. 4 (August 2020): 636–46. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12103-020-09541-5.
• Wu, Cary, Yue Qian, and Rima Wilkes. “Anti-Asian Discrimination and the Asian-White Mental Health Gap during COVID-19.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 44, no. 5 (2021): 819–835. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1851739.

Selected Books

To locate and read these books, cut and paste the title into the main search box on UC Library Search. Many of the titles are available electronically to UC Davis affiliates.

• Aguilar-San Juan, Karin. The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s. Race and Resistance Series. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1993.
• Akatsuka, Neal K. Adolph editor, and Christine Reiko Yano. Straight A’s: Asian American College Students in Their Own Words. Online Access with Subscription: Duke University Press. Duke University Press, 2018. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctv11318z0.
• Ancheta, Angelo N. Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience. 2nd ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
• ———., Suecheng Chan, Thomas Chen, Monica Chiu, Arif Dirlik, Sara Dorow, David Eng, et al. Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader. Rutgers University Press, 2010.
• Asian Americans for Community Involvement. Qualified, but–: A Report on Glass Ceiling Issues Facing Asian Americans in Silicon Valley. San Jose, Calif.: AACI, 1993.
• Balce, Nerissa. Body Parts of Empire: Visual Abjection, Filipino Images, and the American Archive. University of Michigan Press, 2016. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/49334/.
• Bannai, Lorraine K. Enduring Conviction: Fred Korematsu and His Quest for Justice. Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies. University of Washington Press, 2015.
• Boggs, James. Uprooting Racism and Racists in the U.S.A. Detroit : Philadelphia: Advocators ; Pacesetters, 1974.
• Chang, Gordon H., H. Mark Lai, and Judy Yung. Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ucdavis/Doc?id=10114315.
• Chang, Juliana. Inhuman Citizenship: Traumatic Enjoyment and Asian American Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
• Chang, Robert S. Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation-State. Critical America. New York: University Press, 1999.
• Chen, Edith Wen-Chu, and Glenn Omatsu. Teaching about Asian Pacific Americans: Effective Activities, Strategies, and Assignments for Classrooms and Communities. Critical Perspectives on Asian Pacific Americans Series ; v. 15. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
• Cheng, Cindy I.-Fen. The Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
• Chin, Margaret May . Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don’t Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder. New York University Press, 2020.
• Chou, Rosalind. Asian American Sexual Politics the Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.
• ———. Asian Americans on Campus: Racialized Space and White Power. Routledge, 2016.
• ———. The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008.
• Chu, Patricia P. Where I Have Never Been: Migration, Melancholia, and Memory in Asian American Narratives of Return. Asian American History and Culture. Temple University Press, 2019.
• Daniels, Roger. Anti-Chinese Violence in North America. Asian Experience in North America. New York: Arno Press, 1978.
• Davis Asians for Racial Equality. D. A. R. E. Community Newsletter. Davis, Calif.: Davis Asians for Racial Equality, 1985.
• DeWitt, Howard A. Violence in the Fields: California Filipino Farm Labor Unionization during the Great Depression. Saratoga, Calif.: Century Twenty One Pub, 1980.
• Elia, Nada, Jodi  Kim, Shana L. Redmond, Dylan Rodriguez, Sarita Echavez See, David  Hernández, and  Critical Ethnic Studies Editorial Collective. Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader. Duke University Press, 2016.
• Eng, David L. . Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans. Duke University Press, 2019. http://doi.org/10.1215/9781478002680.
• Espiritu, Yen Le. Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love. 2nd ed. Gender Lens Series. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008.
• ———. Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries. University of California Press, 2003.
• Foner, Philip Sheldon, and Daniel Rosenberg. Racism, Dissent, and Asian Americans from 1850 to the Present: A Documentary History. Contributions in American History ; No. 148. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993.
• Fujino, Diane Carol. Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama. Critical American Studies Series. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
• ——. Samurai among Panthers Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life. Critical American Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
• Fujita-Rony, Dorothy B. . American Workers, Colonial Power: Philippine Seattle and the Transpacific West, 1919-1941. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. http://uclibs.org/PID/434866.
• Gutierrez, Ricardo V., Edgardo V. Gutierrez, and Antonio T. Tiongson. Positively No Filipinos Allowed Building Communities and Discourse. Asian American History and Culture. Temple University Press, 2006.
• Habal, Estella. San Francisco’s International Hotel Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement. Asian American History and Culture. Temple University Press, 2007.
• Hall, Patricia Wong, and Victor M. Hwang. Anti-Asian Violence in North America: Asian American and Asian Canadian Reflections on Hate, Healing, and Resistance. Critical Perspectives on Asian Pacific Americans Series. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira, 2001.
• Hamanaka, Sheila. The Journey: Japanese Americans, Racism, and Renewal. New York: Orchard Books, 1990.
• Hartlep, Nicholas Daniel. Modern Societal Impacts of the Model Minority Stereotype. Research Essentials. Information Science Reference, 2015.
• Hatamiya, Leslie. Walk with Pride: Taking Steps to Address Anti-Asian Violence. San Francisco, CA (1765 Sutter St., San Francisco 94115): Japanese American Citizens League, 1991.
• Hinnershitz, Stephanie . A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South. Justice, Power, and Politics. The University of North Carolina Press, 2017. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/55240/.
• Ho, Fred Wei-han. Wicked Theory, Naked Practice: A Fred Ho Reader. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
• Hoang, Haivan V. Writing against Racial Injury: The Politics of Asian American Student Rhetoric. Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015.
• Hong, Cathy Park. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. First edition. One World, 2020.
• Hsu, Madeline Yuan-yin . Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions 497. Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Japanese American Citizens’ League. A Report on Anti-Asian Violence in the United States. San Francisco: The League, 1986.
• ———. The Impact of Japan-Bashing and the “Buy American” Movement on Japanese Americans: An Educational Workbook. San Francisco]: The League, 1992.
• Jeung, Russell editor, Karen Umemoto, Harvey Dong, Eric editor Mar, Lisa Hirai Tsuchitani, and Arnold Pan. Mountain Movers: Student Activism & the Emergence of Asian American Studies. 1st edition. UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2019.
• Joshi, Khyati Y., and Jigna Desai. Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South. Asian American Experience. University of Illinois Press, 2013.
• Kim, Christine . The Minor Intimacies of Race: Asian Publics in North America. Asian American Experience. University of Illinois Press, 2016.
• Kim, Jodi. Ends of Empire Asian American Critique and the Cold War. Critical American Studies Series. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
• Kochiyama, Yuri. Passing It on: A Memoir. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2004.
• Kurashige, Lon . Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States. The University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
• Kurashige, Lon editor. Pacific America: Histories of Transoceanic Crossings. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctvvn1mj.
• Lee, Joann Faung Jean. Changing Shades of the “Yellow Peril”: Asian American Actors in the 1990’s : An Ethnographic Case Study, 1997.
• Lee, Robert G. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Asian American History and Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.
• Le-Khac, Long . Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America. Stanford Studies in Comparative Race and Ethnicity. Stanford University Press, 2020.
• Leong, Russell. Asian Americans on War and Peace. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2002.
• Lew-Williams, Beth. The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America. Harvard University Press, 2018.
• Ling, Huping editor, Allan W. Austin, and Nobuko Adachi. Asian American History and Culture. Volume One-Two: An Encyclopedia. Routledge, 2015.
• Lopez, Lori Kido. Asian American Media Activism: Fighting for Cultural Citizenship. Critical Cultural Communication. New York University Press, 2016.
• Lung-Amam, Willow S.. Trespassers?: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia. University of California Press, 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1p0vk29.
• Maeda, Daryl J. Chains of Babylon The Rise of Asian America. Critical American Studies Series. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
• Maséquesmay, Gina, and Sean Metzger. Embodying Asian/American Sexualities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009.
• McFerson, Hazel M. Blacks and Asians: Crossings, Conflict and Commonality. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2006.
• Murphy, Gretchen. Shadowing the White Man’s Burden: U.S. Imperialism and the Problem of the Color Line. America and the Long 19th Century. New York: University Press, 2010.
• National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. Audit of Violence against Asian Pacific Americans: Anti-Asian Violence, a National Problem : … Annual Report of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. The Consortium, 1994.
• Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Race & Resistance Literature & Politics in Asian America. Race and American Culture. Oxford: University Press, 2002.
• Pfaelzer, Jean. Driven out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2007.
• Rodriguez, Robyn Magalit. Filipino American Transnational Activism: Diasporic Politics in the Second Generation. Global Southeast Asian Diasporas: Memory, Movement, and Modernities Across Hemispheres, Volume 1. Brill, 2020. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=2329143.
• Schlund-Vials, Cathy J., editor. Flashpoints for Asian American Studies.</i. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. href=”http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctt1xhr6h7.
• Schlund-Vials, Cathy J. Asian America: A Primary Source Reader. Yale University Press, 2017.
• Schlund-Vials, Cathy J. editor, Linda Trinh editor Võ, and Kevin Scott Wong. Keywords for Asian American Studies. Keywords Series. New York University Press, 2015. http://openurl.cdlib.org?sid=SCP:DDA&genre=book&pid=%3Cebrary%3E11065866%3C%2Febrary%3E.
• Sohn, Stephen Hong. Inscrutable Belongings: Queer Asian North American Fiction. Asian America. Stanford University Press, 2020.
• Stockdill, Brett C., and Mary Yu Danico. Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy. Intersections (Honolulu, Hawaii). Honolulu : [Los Angeles, Calif.]: University of Hawaiʻi Press ; in association with UCLA, Asian American Studies Center, 2012.
• Takei, George . They Called Us Enemy. Top Shelf Productions, an imprint of IDW Publishing, 2019.
• Tchen, John Kuo Wei, and Dylan Yeats. Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear. Verso, 2014.
• Teranishi, Robert T. Asians in the Ivory Tower: Dilemmas of Racial Inequality in American Higher Education. Multicultural Education Series (New York, N.Y.). New York: Teachers College Press, 2010.
• Tuan, Mia. Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?: The Asian Ethnic Experience Today. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
• Ty, Eleanor. Asianfail: Narratives of Disenchantment and the Model Minority. Asian American Experience. University of Illinois Press, 2017.
• United States Commission on Civil Rights. Recent Activities against Citizens and Residents of Asian Descent. Clearinghouse Publication 88. Washington, DC?]: The Commission, 1986.
• Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline, and Wei Ming Dariotis. Fight the Tower: Asian American Women Scholars’ Resistance and Renewal in the Academy. Rutgers University Press, 2020. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=2275654.
• Wei, William. The Asian American Movement. Asian American History and Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
• Yonemura, Ayanna. Race, Nation, War: Japanese American Forced Removal, Public Policy and National Security. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2019. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429467691.
• Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown. First edition. Pantheon Books, 2020.
• Yu, Henry. Thinking Orientals Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Zhan, Lin. Asian Americans: Vulnerable Populations, Model Interventions, and Clarifying Agendas. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2003.